EAA/ANN AirVenture Innovation Preview

Decided It Was Easier Than Walking With The Boy In The Cold

After deciding he'd rather not have to walk the 400 yards to the bus stop in December and January with his grade-school-aged son, Paul Wallich used his technical knowledge to build a camera-carrying quadcopter to follow his son to the bus stop.

He says that the son thinks its great that his dad can build such a device, but wrote in the tech journal IEEE Spectrum that if he used it for things like spying on the neighbors, that wouldn't be so cool.

Wallich told his story to NBC news, which was relayed by the Huffington Post. Wallich wrote that the aircraft isn't a perfect solution. He said that a GPS tracker in his son's backpack is supposed to guide the quadcopter, but that sometimes trees and other obstacles get in the way. He also said that battery life is an issue. For those reasons, he said, he usually does the trip to the bus stop in person.

Wallich said he built the quadcopter out of off-the-shelf parts, and used a smartphone with video chat for the communications link. We'll leave comments on his parenting skills to those with more expertise in that field.